


all them holy ghosts were laughing when i got down on my knees

by TheFandomLesbian



Series: Spencer's Criminal Minds One-Shots [5]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Fluff, Heid - Freeform, HotchReid - Freeform, Light Angst, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Misunderstandings, Rotch, Spotch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26941222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFandomLesbian/pseuds/TheFandomLesbian
Summary: Spencer makes a mistake and hurts Aaron. He tries to rectify it, but a million hurdles stand in his way.
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner/Spencer Reid
Series: Spencer's Criminal Minds One-Shots [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940851
Comments: 18
Kudos: 118





	all them holy ghosts were laughing when i got down on my knees

"All them holy ghosts were laughing when I got down on my knees, and I gave you my confession: You mean the world to me." -"The World to Me," Freddy and Francine

…

Spencer sat across from Aaron. Aaron had lit the table in his apartment with candlesticks, illuminating the small room with firelight over the panseared steak he'd cooked. "You went over the top on this one," Spencer reminded him gently, his cheeks flushing. "This isn't even an anniversary." As he said it, it made Spencer what it  _ was _ , if not an anniversary—surely there was a reason Aaron had slaved over this meal. Not a birthday, not an anniversary, not a reunion. Spencer ran through the dates. They'd celebrated their two year anniversary two months ago, and they were still months out from his birthday or Aaron's or Jack's (and besides, Jack wasn't here, so it couldn't have anything to do with him). 

"No," Aaron replied patiently, "it's not an anniversary." He fidgeted with his fingers, thumb and forefinger tracing one another. Spencer watched carefully. Aaron self-soothed that way. "Maybe I just want to spoil you."  _ I don't believe that for a second.  _ Spencer licked his lips, analyzing Aaron's behavior, the way his brows twitched and eyelashes fluttered as he thought.  _ Something's bothering him.  _ "Dig in."

Spencer obediently picked up his fork and his knife, cutting into the steak, which Aaron had cooked perfectly to his taste. "You don't expect me to believe that, do you?" he asked as he picked up a bite of steak. Aaron gazed across the table at him. "That nothing's up. I know better than that." Aaron took a manila envelope from the pocket of his suit and placed it on the table beside him. "What is that?" Spencer pressed. 

"It's nothing," Aaron soothed. 

Spencer's mind reeled. "Are you sick?" 

"What? No, I'm not sick—" Aaron gave a breathy, nervous laugh. "I'm not sick, Spencer. Just eat, please?" A flush had risen to Aaron's cheeks in the candlelight. 

"Will you tell me what's going on?" Spencer countered. 

" _ Nothing's _ going on," Aaron reassured. Spencer shot him an anxious, baleful look. "Look—" Aaron cleared his throat. "I was—I was planning on doing this after dinner, but if it's going to worry you, I can do it now, okay?" Spencer's jaw shifted, watching as Aaron reached for the manila envelope and lifted up the silver tab, sliding out a stack of papers. "Everything is fine," Aaron promised him. Sliding a hand into the pocket of his suit, Aaron withdrew a small, velvet box. 

Spencer's heart plummeted into the soles of his feet.  _ No, no, no _ . Aaron couldn't hear the distressed cries in his head echoing through his veins like caves and tunnels, tunnels plunging all the way to his solar plexus and exhaling to the tips of his fingers and his toes. He descended into the abyss, free-falling, and no one could hear his shrieks of terror, not even Aaron, whose hickory eyes shone with anxious adoration as he got down one knee. "Spencer, will you be my husband?" 

His throat closed up in panic. A terrified squeak emerged, not a word, just a sound, like a mouse caught in a trap desperately begging for release. Aaron's face fell, concern replacing everything else on his expression. Spencer took in the scene, something he would never erase from his memory—Aaron, on one knee, looking up at him with pure love and worry, worry because Spencer wasn't  _ saying anything _ and that had to mean something bad because Spencer always had something to say, the candlelight flickering in the reflections of Aaron's dark eyes and the smile slowly vanishing from his face. "Spencer?" Aaron prompted, softer now. 

He placed the open ring box on the table. The ring was beautiful, a hand engraved band with a single diamond imbedded in the silver. Aaron touched Spencer's kneecap. 

The touch jerked Spencer back to reality as he realized Aaron wanted an answer, an answer that wasn't a squeak of terror but actually contained words. "No." Spencer's stomach flipped. He thought he would vomit on the spot. "No, I—I can't, I can't marry you, I—" He covered his mouth with his hand to keep from vomiting either words or chyme all over Aaron. His eyes glossed over with tears. He sucked in a desperate breath through his nose, but air seemed harder to come by than before, his chest filling but no oxygen circulating to the rest of his body. His fingers and toes were so cold, so cold—

Aaron covered his hand with his own, warming it, and something inside of Spencer shattered. "Okay," he said slowly, carefully, drawing up his seat behind him and sitting beside Spencer, not letting go of his cold hand. Aaron always knew what he needed. Aaron was always there. Aaron was perfect, and Spencer sat in front of him, tearing their lives to pieces. Aaron squeezed his hand, grounding him from the racing thoughts in his mind—Aaron could always see when his mind galloped to places it wasn't meant to see. "Can I ask why?" 

It was such a simple question, one that Aaron arguably deserved the answer to—after two years, it seemed it was inevitable, this progression, that they would get engaged and then get married, because that was what people did. But Spencer didn't know how to answer it. He looked at Aaron with pleading eyes.  _ Don't cry, don't cry,  _ he begged himself, because Aaron wasn't crying, and Spencer had just destroyed their relationship in a single, monosyllabic word. Spencer chewed the inside of his cheek. "I—" His voice cracked, and he tried to clear his throat around it. "I love you, I just—"  _ I love you, isn't that enough? Do we have to be more than that? Why? Why? Why?  _ "My mom always said marrying my dad was the worst mistake she ever made in her entire life, he left, and she was so sick, and he still—he still came for every penny in her bank account and everything she owned and he took everything except responsibility for what he'd done—"

Aaron's brow furrowed. "If you want a prenup, I can make us one. I don't think that's unreasonable." He turned Spencer's hand in his own, lacing their fingers together. 

"No,  _ no, _ I don't want a prenup, I don't want to get married—" Aaron had been married and divorced once, and Spencer had seen that—Aaron had given Haley  _ everything.  _ She got the house, the better car, full custody of Jack, plus more than one hundred percent of the alimony and child support they decided on. Aaron wouldn't rake Spencer over the coals to extort money out of him in the event their relationship crashed and burned. Spencer knew that. He knew Aaron wouldn't hurt him. "I—Anything could happen—I don't want you to be saddled with me, that's not fair—"

" _ Saddled _ with you?" Aaron repeated, arching an eyebrow. "Spencer, I  _ love _ you. I want to marry you because I  _ love _ you. Do you understand that?"

"You love me right now—"

"Nothing could ever change that for me, you know that—"

"Will you let me finish?" Spencer snapped. "Please?" A single tear rolled down his cheek, and he closed his eyes to try to keep from shedding more. Aaron fell silent, his mouth hanging open as he seemed to try to find an argument before he acquiesced Spencer's request with a nod. After all, he had asked. He owed it to Spencer to let him finish speaking. "You have  _ no idea _ what it's like caring for a psychotic. Much less while you also have a child—I was  _ three  _ the first time my mom slapped me, Aaron, because she thought I was a robotic spy." 

"That's not going to happen to you," Aaron said firmly. "You're past the age—"

"I  _ know _ the statistics! I do, I know them, and it might be safe, but it's not worth it. It's not worth it for what it would take from you, or for what I could do to Jack—"

"You would never hurt Jack." 

"No, I wouldn't, but I would if I looked at him and saw Chester Hardwick, or if—if the voices told me he was an imposter hiding the real Jack.  _ We don't know _ what could happen, and it's not worth it, it's not worth the risk." 

"I think it is." 

"I don't care what you think!" Spencer's voice went shrill. "It's  _ my  _ future. I gave you my answer." His heart floundered helplessly in his throat. 

Aaron tilted his head. "What do you think would happen, with the way things are now?" he asked softly, his voice not rising at all, though Spencer had nearly shouted at him. "Do you think I would let you suffer alone? Or wash my hands of you just because there isn't some arbitrary piece of paper in the way?"

Spencer set his jaw. He'd had this plan in place for a long time—longer than he'd been with Aaron, since he was in college. "You don't get a say if you're not my relative. I—I'd institutionalize myself, and everyone would be safe." If that didn't work, Spencer had another plan, too, one he wouldn't share with Aaron. 

Aaron's tongue started out across his lips. The look of hurt upon his face stung Spencer's soul. "Okay," he agreed quietly. "I'm sorry." He withdrew his hand from Spencer's. Without his touch, everything seemed colder. He tucked the ring box back into his pocket, and then he slid the papers back into the envelope. He pushed back from the table. "I… I'll give you some space. I'll see you tomorrow." 

He sounded so small. Spencer hated himself for it. "Wait." His voice shook. He turned around to look at Aaron's silhouette in the candlelight. "What… What are the papers for? In the envelope?"

Aaron glanced down at the floor. "They're adoption papers. I thought we'd start the process tonight, so if anything happens to me in the field, custody of Jack would go to you, instead of the state. But—we can't pursue it if we're not married." Aaron had grabbed Spencer's stomach and ripped it out through his mouth and left him bleeding inside. "Goodnight, Spencer." Aaron opened the door and let himself out into the hallway.  _ Wait,  _ Spencer wanted to call after him,  _ wait, we can talk about this, we can talk about it— _

His lips and tongue were frozen, and he stared at the front door of his apartment long after it clicked shut, echoing with finality.  _ What have I done? _ Spencer had promised himself for years, ever since his father left, he would never marry. He owed it to his mother to heed her advice, given in one of her rare moments of clarity as he helped her sort through the divorce proceedings wherein his father had refused to appear in person. He owed it to Aaron; Aaron didn't know what he was asking for. Spencer did know. Spencer knew how much it hurt to care for a psychotic patient full-time. It was dangerous. It was scary. It was hard work. He couldn't do that to the man he loved, or to his son, either.  _ Our son.  _ Spencer's belly flipped and turned, all sick on the inside. 

Aaron had expressed concern before that, if something would happen to him, the state would take custody of Jack before Jessica got to intercede—or worse, on some off-chance that Jessica decided to wash her hands of him completely and stepped back. But Spencer had never dreamed Aaron would take a step like this, would ask this of him. How could he have anticipated this? Most people didn't trust Spencer to keep a plant alive. Aaron was prepared to trust him with the life of his child, trusted him so much, loved him so much to place that upon them. 

Aaron had given Spencer an invitation into his family. And Spencer had stomped on it. 

Spencer never presumed his role in this relationship. Aaron and Jack were a family; he was the new boyfriend. He wouldn't say he liked it that way, but he was comfortable there, comfortable being the new boyfriend, not the step-dad or anything else, and yet—knowing Aaron had thought of it, had planned on it, had an ideal future in which Spencer was one of them… It burned and smoldered inside of him, that he had thrown that away. 

_ I made the right decision _ . It didn't feel like the right decision. He needed someone to tell him it was. 

He picked up his phone and called out to Bennington. "Hi," he said, "can I… can I be connected to Diana Reid, please? Room 302." The operator pushed his call through, and after a few rings, his mother's voice greeted him from the other end of the line. "Hi, Mom, it's me." 

"What's wrong, honey?" 

Spencer sat at the kitchen table over a mostly untouched meal his boyfriend had cooked for him out of the goodness out of his heart, and he hung his head, tears rolling down his cheeks. He couldn't push the tremble out of his voice when he looked at the mashed potatoes and the steaks and the green beans and everything Aaron had slaved over to make this night special. Oh, it was so special, it was so fucking special, it would go down in history as the night Spencer broke the only person who cared about him and threw away his only opportunity for a family, for a future. "I… I think I made a mistake, Mom," he whispered. "And I think I might not be able to fix it." 

"Tell me what's going on." 

Spencer cleared his throat, and then, carefully, slowly, he recounted the night. "He looked," he whispered, "he looked the way a balloon looks when you let all the air out of it. All shriveled up." Aaron would never forgive him—their relationship wouldn't be the same. Spencer couldn't come back from this. How would they recover? Aaron would spend his days feeling he wasn't good enough to marry Spencer, or that Spencer didn't trust him with his future. And maybe it was true. Maybe he didn't trust anyone with his future. Maybe he knew he'd made so many mistakes with his mother, consenting to her care when he didn't know enough, when he didn't have the skills, when he didn't know what was best for her, and he couldn't stand the thought of Aaron living with that same guilt. "Did I do the right thing?" 

"Spencer, you're a moron." 

The blunt affect didn't catch him off-guard, but he still gave a breathless, teary laugh; hearing her speak to him in her no-nonsense way broke him from his spell of dwelling. "Defend your position?" he asked. She wouldn't make an assertion without evidence, even if the assertion was that he was an idiot. 

"You've got a man who already lost everything. He loves and trusts you enough to welcome you into his family and to care for his child. You can't just throw that away based on principle, or some crackheaded advice I gave you twenty-five years ago."

"You think so?" Spencer's voice shook. "What if… what if he changes his mind?" 

"I've seen the way the man looks at you, honey. He's not going to change his mind." Spencer paused, licking his lips. "You know what you need to do." 

"Yeah," he whispered. "Yeah, I do." Butterflies erupted in his tummy, not the good kind, but the kind which tore through him and stirred his anxiety into a hive of bees. "Thanks, Mom. I love you."

"I love you, too, honey." 

Spencer didn’t think any longer for fear he would talk himself out of it. He ended the call, pulled on his shoes, and headed for the door. Thunder pealed in the distance, and as he ducked out of the apartment building, rain cascaded upon him. He had no umbrella. Using his hands to protect his face, he jogged to his car and climbed inside. He jutted his key into the ignition and turned it. The engine sputtered and died. He turned it again, and this time, it didn’t even turn over. Spencer breathed a string of foreign curses under his breath as he withdrew the key. 

It came with driving classic cars, of course, that sometimes they encountered issues he couldn’t anticipate, and he was sure he could fix it tomorrow when it wasn’t raining and he had time and he wasn’t trying to save the only relationship in the whole world that mattered to him—but for right now, he didn’t have time for any of that. 

Sliding out of his car, Spencer tucked his keys into his back pocket and trotted to the sidewalk, heading up the hill. The bus stop was only two blocks away. The rain surged in torrential sheets. Lightning illuminated the sky on occasion, and each crack of thunder pierced his ears from within. He had nothing to protect himself from the elements, and quickly, his clothing soaked all the way to the skin. Jaw chattering, Spencer ducked beneath the narrow shelter at the bus stop. The rain still pelted and sprayed from outside. The bench held a puddle that Spencer didn’t see until he sat in it. 

He sat there, shivering and jittering, for a few minutes, until a homeless man pushed his buggy up behind him. “Young man,” breathed the man, and Spencer turned, expecting him to ask for money. “The bus ain’t running tonight. Crash up on Lakeview and Sycamore Streets. Big pile up. Traffic’s stopped. You’re gonna have to call a cab.”

“Oh.” Spencer reached for his pocket—but he’d left his phone at his apartment. He didn’t have any way to call a cab. Hell, he didn’t have any way to  _ pay for _ a cab; he didn’t have his wallet, only a twenty dollar bill shoved in his back pocket. 

The homeless man squinted at him. “Do you want a coat or something, buddy? You look kinda cold.”

“Er—no.” Spencer stood. His ass was soaked from the puddle on the bench. “Thank you—Thank you.” And, head down, he trudged up the street. 

Spencer had done the math because he had traveled these roads many times. There were four point two miles from his apartment to Aaron’s following the quickest route—he could do it in about an hour, if he kept his pace up. Wheezing and puffing and shivering and wondering if the universe was punishing him for his poor decision-making, he trudged onward, the wind battering him backward and the lightning providing illumination as he proceeded. 

Twenty blocks later, he ducked into a flower shop, where a somewhat harried old woman regarded him behind her bifocals. “Er—” He was dripping all over her floor. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “Um—” He didn’t take a step off of the front rug. “How do I say ‘I’m a moron, I was wrong, I messed up, I do want to be part of your family, and I love you’ in flower?” 

She tilted her head. “Columbine for folly, heliotrope for eternal love and devotion, speedwell for fidelity, ivy for enduring family ties… given the context of what you’ve just said to me.”

“Great, great, could I…” 

She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t move, Aquaman. I’ll come to you.” 

He left twenty dollars poorer with a very bizarre cluster of flowers all wrapped up in plastic, and as he checked his watch, he picked up into a run. Jack was at a friend’s tonight for a sleepover, but Spencer wanted to catch Aaron before he went to bed--he wanted to catch him at home, awake, eating a dinner that would certainly be considered subpar compared to what currently sat on Spencer’s table getting cold surrounded by lit candles he hadn’t bothered to blow out before he ran out the door in his haste.

By the time Spencer reached Aaron’s apartment, he had more than one stitch in his side. The gales had tarnished his sodden hair and clothing and cast his flowers askew even under the plastic. He shivered from head to toe. His whole body refused to work together as a coherent whole, nothing but a series of jagged movements and jerks. When he stopped in front of Aaron’s apartment door, large black spots danced in his vision. His stomach flipped, and he didn’t know if it stemmed from exertion or from anxiety, but regardless, he wondered if he would vomit. 

He knocked.  _ One one thousand two one thousand three one thousand four one thousand five one— _ The door swung open. “Spencer—what the hell  _ happened _ to you?” This greeting didn’t surprise Spencer as he took stock of himself, quivering and soaked to the bone, dripping water everywhere, white with rosy patches on his cheeks, his hair slicked to his skin.

“I’m an idiot.” Spencer’s gasping, trembling voice caught him by surprise. “I—I—I— _ choo. _ ” He sneezed into the mangled flowers, and then he dropped to his knees, Aaron reaching to steady him or catch him, his face uncertain. “I was wrong—” He gasped for breath between short snippets of words. “I am so sorry, I’m—was stupid, I panicked, I—can’t--don’t--have a future without you, I want—a family—want our family—” Aaron looked all woozy around the edges of his figure. Spencer blinked to try to clear things up. It didn’t help. “I want to marry you, Aaron—will you marry me?” 

Aaron grabbed him by the shoulders. “Of course I will.” He dragged Spencer back to his feet. Spencer stumbled into his arms and kissed him hungrily, like a man in a desert stumbling upon an oasis. Aaron was gentle and tender with him, his hands sliding under Spencer’s shirt.

Spencer flinched at the sensation. Aaron’s hands were hot on his pale, frigid skin. “I know—we’re probably supposed to—do that right now—but I just ran—like, four miles—in the pouring rain—”

Aaron gave a tiny, lopsided smile. “I’m not trying to have sex with you. I’m taking these wet clothes off of you, you hypothermic doof.” 

“Oh—Okay, cool— _ a-choo. _ ” Spencer sneezed into Aaron’s mouth, and Aaron didn’t mind, and Spencer wondered if anyone else would ever have a love as good as this one. 

If anyone ever asked, the pneumonia was absolutely worth it. 


End file.
